Lawmakers find oil spill making politics slippery

JENNIFER A. DLOUHY, WASHINGTON BUREAU

Published
5:30 am CDT, Friday, May 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — The oil now lapping barrier islands near Louisiana threatens wildlife, wetlands and businesses all along the Gulf Coast, but its reach also extends hundreds of miles to the nation's capital, where it is causing political discomfort — and downright embarrassment — for some lawmakers and administration officials.

The April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP and the resulting spill of tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico also have caused a role reversal in Washington, with Republicans from coastal states abandoning their limited government credos to push for a more robust federal response and Democratic drilling foes forced to rely on “Big Oil” to solve a complicated technological problem.

“People are still uncertain how big a political problem this has the potential to be …but they are not taking any chances,” Buchanan said.

At the White House, the spill cast a shadow on President Barack Obama's March 31 proposal to allow oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico as well as new areas of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

Administration officials initially downplayed prospects that the offshore drilling plan would be abandoned in the wake of the spill. Then they shifted course. On April 30, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said no new drilling would be authorized “until we find out what happened here.”

On Thursday, the government indefinitely postponed preparations to sell a drilling lease off the coast of Virginia, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar halted the processing of offshore drilling permits pending a safety review.

The political contortions are inspired by a backlash from environmentalists who are among Obama's key constituencies and who have opposed the offshore drilling proposal from day one.

No more ‘drill, baby, drill'

But Republicans are in the hot seat too. Environmentalists and drilling foes are relishing any chance to remind Republicans that they were chanting “drill, baby, drill” when gasoline prices spiked in 2008.

Schwarzenegger said his decision was compelled by seeing TV footage of “birds drenched in oil” and “fishermen out of work” because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

In Congress, Republicans from Gulf states who often decry government spending have been pushing for more federal resources — and dollars — to flow to the recovery effort, even though that seems to counter their cries for a limited government response to the financial meltdown in 2008 and other crises.

Administration wary

On April 28, just days after the leak was discovered, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., asked the federal government to step up its work deploying booms “and other available assets” to protect “the Gulf Coast's ecosystem” from advancing oil. “We must posture federal assets in a manner that will protect the most sensitive ecosystems,” Shelby said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., has said that “the federal government does have a role” in responding to the disaster, and signaled that federal regulators may have been complacent in overseeing drilling and preparing for a worst-case scenario.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said the government should have deployed federal resources sooner, instead of letting BP be “in charge of the response for the first 12 days.”

Obama has labeled BP the “responsible party” on the hook for all cleanup and recovery costs, because it is leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig and the tract in which it operated. The Coast Guard is partnering with BP on the containment and cleanup efforts. And the administration is acutely aware that the White House could be hit with political fallout if oil and gas industry engineers are unable to stanch the oil gushing into the Gulf.

White House officials are trying “to control the message” about the disaster — and make clear they believe BP is responsible, said Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University.

“They want to frame this as (the actions of) a bad egg, BP,” Stein said, “and an industry that needs to figure out how to do this and do it right.”

After Pence characterized the administration's response as lagging, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs unveiled an 18-page chronology detailing when and what federal agencies have done since the rig's explosion.

Administration officials are “wary and vigilant about the issue,” Buchanan said, “and they jump on any turn against them in the public square. They answer it immediately.”